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For the past few years I’ve celebrated my December birthday with an all-day open house binge watch of Hallmark Christmas Movies. When I say “Hallmark Christmas Movies,” I’m talking about an idea, not an actual brand.

You know how people ask for a “Kleenex” but they’re just talking about any old tissue? Or a “Band-Aid” but they really just mean a sticky bandage?

That’s how I use “Hallmark Movie.”

To get an idea of what counts as a Hallmark Movie in my world, check out this year’s scavenger hunt. The boxes next to each item are rectangular, allowing for tally marks because you’ll probably get several of them more than once. [PDF Download Available Below]

I haven’t had the best of luck procuring a gift for Laylee’s sixteenth birthday. To be perfectly clear, she’s not getting anything lavish because our insurance rates are about to go through the roof with a teenage driver in the house.

The store from which I ordered her present several days ago just emailed to let me know the gift was backordered and won’t arrive until several weeks past her birthday.

I had one other small item in mind for something to unwrap on the big day, but it was difficult to find. I called around to a few shops and ended up finding it at a shop about 20 minutes from here.

So, I drove to this small town with just enough time to get the gift and buy groceries before I needed to be home for an appointment. The pleasant shop girl explained that… oops… they didn’t actually have the item but she knew of a place in a town 10 minutes further away that might have it.

I growled under my breath, thanked her and headed to my car. I had a choice. I could buy the groceries and head home or I could forget about trifling concerns like feeding my family and continue in pursuit of the birthday gift. I chose the gift.

This time, I called ahead (like I had with the first shop) but I told them about my experience driving out to Town A and being disappointed and asked them to check their stock to make sure they had it.

They put me on hold.

They checked.

They had it.

I drove to town B.

They did not have it.

BUT the man behind the counter, who randomly told me that college was a waste of money because all they do is brainwash you, told me he knew of a place in Kirkland that might have the item.

He couldn’t remember the name of it, but he drew me the following map.

Let me explain. The big X marks “that one part of I-405 where traffic backs up.” When you get to that part of the freeway, you take the road under the freeway. There will be a shop there of unknown name that may or may not have the item. The small x indicates its location.

You’ll know it’s the right shop if a man named Hector is working there.

Now, we’ve learned that calling ahead doesn’t work anyway and I don’t have a phone number but I DO have a map.

So, here’s my plan.

I will take SR 520 to I-405. I will drive north towards Kirkland. When traffic slows I will exit immediately and drive under the freeway. I will then unroll my window and begin calling for Hector.

What could go wrong?

I was recently filling out the paperwork for my new dentist.

Name: Kathryn Thompson

Preferred Name: ???

Hmmm… Not nearly enough people call me K-Dawg. I would prefer it.

So I typed it in and forgot about it. Fast forward a few days and I’m sitting in the lobby in my yoga pants, drinking lemon-infused water and reading a YA novel.

The door cracks open. A dental assistant looks around the lobby, sees me and smiles.

“K-Dawg,” She says sweetly, “We’re ready for you.”

I head back with her and she is all professionalism.

“What brings you to our office, K-Dawg?”

“It’s nice to meet you, K-Dawg.”

“Do you see this picture of your tooth, K-Dawg? That amount of discoloration is normal, K-Dawg.”

The only indication that she’s winking at me on the inside is how frequently she says my name. If my preferred name were, say, Kathryn for example, I doubt she’d feel the need to use it at the end of every sentence.

“You know, you can just call me Kathryn if you like,” I offer.

“Oh no. You said you preferred K-Dawg and I want to respect your wishes.”

This could have come across as snotty but she’s openly grinning at me now and I know that by typing that one little word, I’ve made a friend. I’ve made an office full of friends. Every member of the staff, from the receptionist to the Dentist refer to me only as K-Dawg. Apparently the system is automated so whenever they walk into the room to speak to me, the name K-Dawg appears in bold letters on their screens.

A week after my visit a card came in the mail, thanking me for coming in. I know they send these cards to everyone but I like to think that K-Dawg’s card was a little more personal. K-Dawg’s card was a little more fun.

Because K-Dawg needs mad props, yo. Because K-Dawg has a monopoly on small town phatness.

Word.

I’ll be honest. We don’t actually live in Seattle. We just claim it because it has one of the five coolest Space Needles of any of the surrounding cities. Our small town is about 45 minutes outside Seattle. But I’d bet my IKEA solar lantern that you’ve never heard of my town so just picture a forest outside Seattle when you think of me and you’ll be about right. A forest past the cow fields.

When the power goes out here, it’s not playing around. This isn’t a small flicker and then BOOM it’s back. No. When the wind blows and the power goes out here, it is the result of the surrounding Ents growing restless and throwing their bodies down across the power lines in a fit of rage. This happened on Saturday night.

The longest we’ve ever been without power was a little over a week . It was cold but fun at first and then super not fun with little freezing kids in the dark and no internet. In 2006 *GASP* we didn’t have smart phones with access to Instagram during an emergency! I know. It makes me cry a little too.

This time around, most of King County had power restored within 24 hours. But we were in this strange pocket right in the middle of our town that didn’t. While everyone around us was relieved to have power, we were still pioneering it… with our house-wired generator and our cute candles and our gas stove and oven in which we baked chocolate chip cookies and our smart phones with 4G internet access.

So yeah. We weren’t like pioneers at all. But we couldn’t use the washing machine or the dishwasher effectively. So, there’s that.

At first the kids were bummed to have to get up and go to school at stupid-o-clock in the morning during a power outage that only affected about 50 homes in our district, but then they became increasingly enamored with the happy drama of it all, to the point that Laylee’s response to the restored power this morning bordered on what my phone has been autocorrecting “outage” to for the past few days – “OUTRAGE.”

It was funny following the community discussion boards on facebook and people were complaining about the power being out and I kept thinking, “…You say from your magically charged smart phone.” I know people were cold and we were blessed to have a fireplace and a generator, but we really do live in a pretty cushy day and age.

Start up the generator so we can watch a movie by candlelight!

And the power came back on this morning. That’s right. We were without electricity for about 55 hours, spanning four days. And we LIVED!

I even learned to hookup, fill, and run the generator. It’s one of those things I’ve always sort of relegated to Dan, along with checking mouse traps and teaching saxophone lessons. But no more. I have claimed my lady power and am fully capable of juicing our house in an emergency.

Like any disaster, we found a few holes where we could stand to be more prepared, but mostly things just went really smoothly. I’m stoked. It’s taken us nearly a decade of living in the “wilderness” but I finally feel ready for almost any moderate power-related disaster where our home is still habitable. Next step. Earthquake prep.

She wore the ninja headband to preschool today. We were ten minutes late because she just HAD to paint one more Seahawks-colored rock. HAD to! It’s hard to say “no” when creative genius is at work and when saying “yes” means she gets to stay with me for a few more minutes.

“Please, oh please wear black lipstick for Halloween,” she begged in the car, “You would just look so BEAU-tiful and so CREEPY! You have to do it.”

I told her I’d think about it.

Sometimes it’s painful spending my days alone with Wanda. When she talks, my cheeks hurt from smiling. When I look at her, my heart travels into my throat and it’s hard to swallow. When she hugs me, my eyes leak.

Today I was just dropping her off at preschool and she was washing her hands and I started to weep. I wasn’t bawling, but salty emotion water definitely made its way out of my ocular cavities. I didn’t want to leave but I made my way out of the preschool and into my car. I would weigh 400 pounds if I sat around staring at her as often as I want to sit around staring at her.

She’s the last one.

I have been blessed with gorgeous, sweet, adorable little people who have come into my life with huge personalities and endless sweetness and have let me love them. And they’re getting big. And they’re growing independent. They read and make their own breakfast and sometimes even shower.

Laylee’s in middle school and it’s changing her. It’s not bad. Just different. No longer is she the portable little friend who follows me around everywhere I go in her snow white dress. She is a lady-girl. She has things to do and people to see and chores to be annoyed about.

Magoo isn’t far behind.

I miss my babies and they’re not even gone.

There was some point a few years ago when I went to a wedding and instead of identifying with the bride, I started identifying with the mother of the bride. Instead of thinking about my own wedding and comparing our dresses and decorations, I wondered what Laylee’s wedding would be like. It scared me.

I am not ready to move on from this phase of my life. I am not ready to be a daytime empty-nester, to have conversations that never involve ninjas or why we don’t paint on our bodies. I am not ready to grow up.

After I left Wanda at preschool, I got in my car and “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri was playing and I cried. I remember when love songs were all about cute boys and romance to me. But being a mom has opened up so many more kinds of love.

You’re-growing-inside-of-me-and-I-feel-like-I-know-you-even-though-we’ve-never-met love
Rock-you-to-sleep-and-stare-at-your-peaceful-face love
Duct-tape-you-into-your-diaper love
As-I-rush-you-to-the-hospital-I question-whether-I’d-be-able-to-go-on-without-you love
Calmly-explain-for-the-hundredth-time-how-the-toilet-flusher-works love
Kick-me-in the-face-all-night-long-but-when-I-carry-you-back-to-bed-I’m-still-overwhelmed-by-how-much-I-love-you love
Let-you-experience-negative-consequences-even-though-it-makes-me-cry-when-you’re-not-looking love
You’re-PMSing-so-I’ll-cut-you-some-slack Love

The list keeps growing. And I guess I’ll keep growing too. I don’t cry every time I think about Wanda starting kindergarten next year and it will probably keep getting easier. But sometimes I have to cry in my car, cry like a baby, because I don’t have any of those anymore.

[This is a guest post by Dan!]

Wanda recently had a birthday. Among her many joyous activities she had some time to sit down and do a little drawing. She was drawing a picture of a little girl and I asked her “is that little girl five years old, like you?”

“Nooo! She’s FOUR just like me!”

“Don’t you turn five today?”

“I’m four until I get my PRESENTS. THEN I’ll be five.”

So there you have it: aging is a product of the presents.

We were at a friend’s house today when Wanda saw a horrific sight over my shoulder. It was a sight that made her startle, gasp and clasp her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide.

What she had seen…

Prepare yourselves emotionally…

Was…

THIS!!!!

“Mom!” she said emphatically, “She’s sitting on the train tracks! She could have been KILLED!”

Indeed. She was sitting on the train tracks. My diabolical friends had posed their adorable child at death’s door because they thought it looked cute. Maybe they’re thrill seekers. Maybe they hate safety. Whatever the reason, they put their family in great peril, took pictures of it, blew them up huge on canvas and hung them on their walls.

The look on Wanda’s face said it all. What next? We could take a picture of Laylee hanging by three fingertips from a cliff wall or Magoo juggling chainsaws, smoking a stogie, or riding in a car with no seatbelt and hang those on the wall. Twisted. Very twisted, my friends.

Wanda noticed the moon was up and the sun was going to sleep. She commented that she, quite similarly, goes to sleep at night. This fact is debatable. She goes upstairs at night. What happens there is mysterious, frequently loud, and in no way resembles slumber.

I told her that animals who stay up at night are called nocturnal.

“Like owls,” Laylee chimed in.

“Yeah,” I said, “And vampires… um… and bats.”

“Oh, yeah,” Wanda joined in. Because when my four-year-old hears “vampires,” she’s gonna be part of that jelly. “And skeletons. And zombies definitely. And wizards… mmmmaybe.”

Harry did spend an awful lot of time roaming the halls at night in that invisibility cloak. But… he was also awake enough to play quidditch. I’m on the fence about wizards too. We’ll have to ask Carl Linnaeus about that one.

Maybe it was Amelie.
Maybe it was southern summer nights.
Maybe it was me. Maybe it was you. But I sure love gno-omes.

Garden gnomes in animated films? Meh.

But real, serious, ceramic, wood or even resin garden gnomes. I love em. I’ve gotta have em in my life. But they have to be right. They have to be perfect. In short – I have only ever owned two gnomes. And not for lack of trying. I’ve tried to meet a good gnome everywhere. I’ve even considered looking for a match online. Maybe you found your gnome online and I don’t judge you. Lots of people do these days but I wanted to meet him face to face.

My first gnome came into my life my freshman year of college. My sister Meg introduced him as a birthday present and he lounged around my dorm and eventually, after Dan and I got married, he was relocated outdoors, where his sunbathing days have turned his blue towel teal and his red suit pink. He’s not the gnome he once was.

So, for three years, I’ve been looking for a replacement or at the very least, a better-looking younger friend. Gnome 1 was no longer front porch material.

So every gift shop, garden department, and outdoor statuary store I visit, I get right up close to the gnomes, look into their eyes and try to sense a connection. Nothing. Frequently I spot the problem from several feet away. They’re standing or sitting awkwardly or doing a random activity like mixed martial arts or shooting craps or something and I think, I like my gnomes meek and sans gambling addiction.

Either that or I look into their eyes and they’re either painted on lopsided, or they are dead soulless voids. I like my gnomes mischievous, but just mischievous enough, not too much. More David Tennant than Martin Short.

So three weeks ago, I found him. At Fred Meyer in Kirkland, the gnome I’d been looking for peeked up from the book he was reading and screamed, “TAKE ME HOME!”

So I did.

And I loved him. Past tense.

Because on Monday, as I was pulling into my long driveway at a probably legal, but possibly irresponsible speed, I almost hit a deer. I gave the deer a verbal fist shake. Most people hit deer on the highway. Can you imagine the sheer volume of moronity points I would earn for totaling my car in a deer collision… on my driveway? Of course I was enraged at the deer and all of his stupid friends. They poop on my lawn, nibble my fruit trees, terrorize my slugs, and eat the onions out of my ghetto swimming-pool-full-of-dirt garden, onions that were only planted because they’re supposed to be deer repellent.

I was trying to regulate my near-miss rise in blood pressure by listing Bambi’s many flaws and misdeeds when I noticed a big pile of junk scattered across my front walk. What could it be?

I got out of the car and walked closer.

NO!

Yes.

Gnome shards.

My brand new, highly literate, maxed-out-my-entire-yearly-gnome-budget GNOME WAS OBLITERATED. And the delinquent deer showed no remorse, no respect.

GIRRRRL!

I went off on those deer with the vengeance of a woman de-gnomed. Wanda was confused.

“Why are you mad at the deers?” She asked sweetly.

“They destroyed my dad gum ratchin’ fratchin’ gnome!”

“Nope. That was Magoo.”

“What?! No. Magoo would never do that to me. It was the deer. If Magoo had pipe-bombed my garden gnome, he would have had the decency to apologize. He would never have just left him there… like that.”

“I saw him. It was Magoo.”

“Oh, yeah? When did he do it?”

“Ummm… 8 o’clock,” she replied.

No way. No way Magoo would play me like that. Not my own flesh and blood.

So, I spent the afternoon searching the area around the porch for gnome shards and super-gluing them back together. He’s still missing chunks.

When Magoo got home, he admitted to knocking over the gnome and then walking away, like a cool guy from an explosion. What the hay?

I talked to Dan. He had watched Magoo lay waste to my dearest garden figurine friend and also walked away.

“But you could have called. Or texted. All day long, you were at work, knowing my beloved gnome was destroyed, knowing, I would come home and with no warning find a pile of gnome shards on my front porch, like a warning from The Garden Mafia. All day long you knew and you didn’t bother to warn me?”

“We were late. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

Sigh.

Seeing as we have no more gnome budget for the year and seeing as I love Magoo and Daniel more than I love a resin garden creature, I have chosen to forgive, but I send this plea out into the universe – FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS DECENT IN HUMANITY, IF YOU DETONATE SOMEONE’S GNOME ON YOUR WAY OUT THE DOOR TO PIANO LESSONS, COVER THE BODY OR AT THE VERY LEAST, SEND A TEXT OF CONFESSION.

Consider this a public service announcement. May no one ever. EVER. Come home to gnome shards again. You can make a difference. Be the change.

Bloggable things happen but I’m out of the habit of capturing them and then quicker than a Seattle snow storm, they disappear and when I sit down TO BLOG… nothing. So here are a few tidbits from this weekend before they melt.

One – Wanda brought me a bottle of mustard during choir practice. It was at our house today and I opened the mustard, not bothering to wonder why she needed mustard during choir practice. She ran happily off, one pigtail up, one pigtail down, both pigtails adorable. We found her after choir, nursing a sparkly butterfly cup of ketchup/mustard mixture, slurping it from a spoon, “Because it tastes so GOOD!”

Two – One of my favorite hobbies is telling my kids to clean up their crap off the floor. In fact, to a fly on our wall, it may look like telling my kids to pick up their shoes, backpacks, rainbow loom bands, books, wimples, crisping pins, etc. was my favorite thing ever. It is not number one but maybe in the top eight. Well, today I called Wanda and asked her to put her shoes away. She gave me a response I had never heard before, nor had I thought possible, especially from a four-year-old.

The most frequent response from my kids is a sigh. Second most frequent is an eye-roll, often accompanied by laser eyes of rage. What Wanda did was run into the family room, grab her shoes, smile up at me and say, “Thank you for reminding me, Mom. I forgot.” Then she ran and put them in the shoe basket. I’m not making this up. I am not that creative.

Three – Sometimes I help Wanda do things. At church today they asked the kids what their parents help them do. One of the three-year-olds I teach said his mom helps him turn on the train show. When I asked him what else she does for him, he said, “Turns on the play-doh show,” and continued listing all the shows his mom lets him “watch.” His mom is a great mom and a domestic goddess, btw, so I knew he was omitting a few key items from the list.

That’s why, when the head teacher asked Wanda to share with the entire kid congregation what her mom helps her do, I sat with bated breath, praying she wouldn’t expose me. “My mom helps me become resistant to cranky rants,” or “My mom helps me drink ketchup and mustard,” were possibilities. But no, she said, “My mom helps me clean the kitchen and set up my Thomas train tracks.” Boo-yah! Best mom ever.

Usually Wanda cleans the kitchen by herself but every once in a while I help. And today I got credit for it.